September 2009
12 posts
2 tags
It's the little things
If we’re designing systems we want people to love it could be more important to think about the little things that will get on their nerves than the cool things that excite them.
When you spend a lot of time with someone it’s the little things that piss you off most. The way they leave their shoes in the hall, the way they make a funny little noise when they eat, the way they…...
1 tag
Liveblogging My Journey Home
This is me blogging on the bus. I’m at Old Street. I’ve got the Tumblr app on my iPhone and I thought I might as well use it, so here goes! This could be incredibly mundane. Sorry.
Wonder how useful mobile blogging actually is and whether I’m actually ever going to do anything with it. I’m at Angel now.
I get the train to work because it’s quick and the bus...
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Augmented Reality
In case you haven’t noticed, the digital marketing world is in a bit of a tizz about Augmented Reality.
Before you continue I should really point out that I’m not endorsing Augmented Reality. I think it’s interesting but it’s really a solution looking for a problem. I’ve got my eye on it but I think that on the whole it’s pretty useless and a bit annoying at...
2 tags
Cute little things
This is Keepon. He’s a robot by a company called BeatBots LLC who’s core philosophy is based on cute simple things to help destroy the notion of the robot as something to be feared.
I’d seen it before but I feel it fits nicely into what I’ve been talking about recently. Small, cute things are much easier for us to engage with emotionally - and that that’s what...
3 tags
Uncanny Valley
Recently I’ve been thinking about the concept of uncanny valley.
Uncanny valley is what happens when artificial things get so realistic they’re almost perfect. There’s a point where they start becoming less believable the more realistic they become. In the case of artificial humans they become more corpse-like the more real they become. There’s something repulsive about...
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9 tags
Post Digital User Experience
I’ve been getting this odd feeling recently. The feeling of being a bit penned in by purely digital design. The feeling that I could be doing more.
I’ve also become frustrated by the general lack of emotion in user experience design as touted by the UX community. Something I’ve been talking about at length with anyone that will listen (thanks Oli).
You can make a website that...
WatchJust by chance I stumbled across Amelia being shown on TV this afternoon. It’s a superb piece of modern ballet by a group from Quebec called Lalala Human Steps. I would never have said I’m a big fan of ballet at all - but this completely blew me away.
“Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself - in fact, till it...”
– Elizabeth Bowen
WatchNearness is a collaborative project between Touch and Berg with help from Tinker.it to explore interaction without touch.
It’s a wicked concept piece that showcases the sort of groundbreaking thinking that’s going on around physical computing and mobile technology.
Excellent.
Interesting 09
I was lucky enough to go to Russell Davies’ Interesting 09 this weekend.
Fascinating. A whole day of short talks about interesting stuff. What could be better?
Here’s a list of speakers and what they talked about.
If you’re interested, the slide in the photo was from a talk about Francis Galton who invented the questionnaire (woo), the weather map (yay), the dog whistle...
1 tag
Finally Cleaned My Tumblr Account
Whoah, now that was a mission!
I’ve had this Tumblr account for over a year now but haven’t bothered trying to update it as I got bored and moved on to using my Soup account as a primary website. I hardly ever post to my actual website any more either. The reason why I’m picking up this Tumblr account again after all this time is that I’m experimenting with setting up a...